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MUSIC 13N:Bollywood and Beyond: South Asian Popular and Folk Music

This seminar is an introduction to regional and popular music of South Asia¿India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. An immense variety of South Asian music¿everything from drumming to wedding songs to movie scores¿is woven into the social lives of both audiences and performers. Through their music, people across South Asia express social criticism, bring about political change, engage in worship, mark rites of passage, and cope with rapid and unsettling socio-economic changes. For example, Marathi kirtan, a form of devotional song/storytelling from Western India, has been used to teach spiritual lessons and oppose colonial occupation; musicians from South Indian oppressed castes enlist drums to protest their low social status; and the ever-popular Bollywood dance music creates a sense of home for Indians living abroad. In this seminar you will have the opportunity to acquire listening skills that will enhance your appreciation of the variety and depth of South Asian folk and popular music. We will draw on areas such as folklore and ethnomusicology to gain an understanding about what makes these musical practices thrive. And we will go on three field trips, which will give you an opportunity to engage first-hand with South Asian music and musicians in our local community. No musical experience is required.

What does it mean to be a Native American in the 21st century? Beyond traditional portrayals of military conquests, cultural collapse, and assimilation, the relationships between Native Americans and American society. Focus is on three themes leading to in-class moot court trials: colonial encounters and colonizing discourses; frontiers and boundaries; and sovereignty of self and nation. Topics include gender in native communities, American Indian law, readings by native authors, and Indians in film and popular culture.

Stanford was built on land originally inhabited by the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, and Native American students have always held an important place in the university community from the writer and journalist John Milton Oskison (Cherokee) who graduated in 1894 to current enrolments of over three hundred students who represent over fifty tribes. Two hundred years ago, the Muwekma language was one of a hundred languages that made California one of the most linguistically-diverse places on earth. Today, less than half of these languages survive but many California Indian communities are working hard to maintain and revitalize them. This is a familiar pattern globally: languages around the world are dying at such a rapid rate that the next century could see half of the world's 6800 languages and cultures become extinct unless action is taken now. Focusing especially on California, this course seeks to find out how and why languages die; what is lost from a culture when that occurs; and how `sleeping¿ languages might be revitalized. We will take a field trip to a Native American community in northern California to witness first-hand how one community is bringing back its traditional language, songs, dances, and story-telling. We will learn from visiting indigenous leaders and linguistic experts who will share their life, language, and culture with the class. Through weekly readings and discussion, we will investigate how languages can be maintained and revitalized by methods of community- and identity-building, language documentation and description, the use of innovative technologies, writing dictionaries and grammars for different audiences, language planning, and data creation, annotation, preservation, and dissemination. Finally, the course will examine ethical modes of fieldwork within endangered-language communities.

Last offered: Winter 2017
| UG Reqs: WAY-ED, WAY-SI

OB 110N:Savvy: Learning How to Communicate with Purpose

Our seminar is designed for students interested in improving their communication skills. Right now, you probably don¿t spend much time thinking about the way you communicate, nor are you likely, in the academic setting, to get much feedback on the messages you send. Yet the quality of your communication will have a large impact on your overall effectiveness in building relationships and getting things done, both in the university setting and later in your career. Each of the sessions in our seminar will help you appreciate the nature and complexity of communication and provide guidelines for both improving your communication style and recognizing the unique styles of others. nnIn each class session, we¿ll consider a number of well-studied forms of interpersonal communication. And, we¿ll rely heavily on experiential learning to bring the concepts to life. For example, to better understand the dynamics of unstructured, spontaneous communication, we will participate in an improvisational theatre workshop, taught by one of the artists-in-residence at the Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles. To better understand persuasive communication tactics, we¿ll participate in role-play exercises, competitive games, and negotiation simulations. For each tactic, we¿ll talk about why it works, when it works best, and what its limitations might be. We¿ll discuss how you can put these approaches to work in order to support your goals. nnAfter taking this course, you will be better able to: (1) identify strategies for crafting effective communication in the form of everyday conversation, written work, and public presentations, (2) develop techniques for building strong, long-term relationships with your peers, and (3) become more persuasive in advancing an agenda, acquiring resources, or gaining support from others. These skills will be invaluable to you as you grow and develop here at Stanford and beyond.

Last offered: Spring 2017
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI

OB 115N:Games, Decisions and Negotiations

Human thinking is geared toward understanding and mastering social interactions.
OB 115N explores cognitive, affective, behavioral, social and organizational processes that shape how we manage strategic interactions. The course builds on concepts and research findings from decision theory, behavioral game theory, negotiation research, and other relevant streams of investigation in the social sciences. By the end of this course, participants should have a better understanding of the structural and psychological factors that underlie competition and cooperation, bargaining, contracting, social influence, dispute resolution, and other types of social and organizational interactions. In addition to understanding how to analyze human thinking, feeling, and action in interactive contexts, participants will have opportunities to develop their behavioral skills through in-class exercises and simulations. Participants will play assigned roles in simulated interactions that will allow them to try out tactics that might feel uncomfortable trying in actual situations, get constructive feedback from other participants, and learn how they come across. The course readings, which are aimed to complement the in-class exercises, debriefs, and discussions, are aimed to further stimulate participants' interest in human cognition, emotion, and behavior in interactive contexts.To understand how decisions happen, we will use a combination of experiential exercises in class and in-depth discussions of theory and new and exciting research findings on cognitive and emotional aspects of decision making (e.g., what does "bounded-rationality" mean? how does power shape our negotiation behavior? how do our emotions influence our decisions?). We will play interactive games in our meetings to understand how various conditions, such as time pressure, power and uncertainty, influence our decisions. So, if you enjoy in-class exercises, you will enjoy our simulations. At the same time, if you enjoy analyzing human behavior and social interactions, you will like the readings and our discussions. After taking this course, you will be better able to identify and avoid common traps in strategic decision making and have a deeper understanding of other people's thinking and decision making processes.

OSPAUSTL 40:Australian Studies

Introduction to Australian society, history, culture, politics, and identity. Social and cultural framework and working understanding of Australia in relationship to the focus on coastal environment in other program courses. Field trips.

OSPBER 71:EU in Crisis

Challenges confronting Europe as a whole and the EU in particular: impact of the sovereign debt crisis of the Eurozone, mass migration, external and internal security challenges, as well as political and social needs for reform. How the EU and its members respond and if the opportunities of these crises are constructively used for reform - or wasted (Crisis = Danger + Opportunity). Analyse institutions, interests and competing narratives to explain the current situation in Europe. Excursion to Athens or similar to get a non-German perspective on the crises.

History and theoretical concepts of International Relations, taking advantage of Berlin's unique history. Topics include: balance of power system, the era of total war, the East-West conflict, and the age of globalization, connecting these international political phenomena to sites and features of historical and contemporary Berlin. Core issues and theories of International Relations positioned in relation to the social and political history of Berlin, offering both a knowledge of Berlin as a global city of the twentieth century, and an understanding of International Relations through concrete examples.

OSPBER 115X:The German Economy: Past and Present

The unsteady history of the German economy in the Wilhelmine Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the post WWII divided and united Germany. Special attention on the economic policy of the Third Reich and the present role of Germany in the world economy